Colonial School Board modifies delinquent tax process

WHITEMARSH — The Colonial School Board approved a resolution that will modify the schedule and method of collecting delinquent taxes in order to align the district with the standards approved by the county several months ago.

Under the new policy, the county will continue to assess a five percent penalty for collecting delinquent taxes but places the burden of paying the tax on the taxpayer rather than the body that is due the back taxes.

“(The county) has now reinforced their ability to impose this five percent commission and now impose this delinquent tax penalty onto the delinquent tax payer,” said Trevor Jackson, business administrator for Colonial School District. “This will no longer be a reduction in revenue received by the district.”

For the Colonial School District, this change will mean an increase in revenue from delinquent taxpayers because the district had already used the county services. However, the new procedure could have potentially meant less income for the district if it had used an outside agency to collect back taxes.

“This can have a negative impact on other school districts that may be using a third party,” Jackson explained. “Here at Colonial, we utilize the services of the county to collect our delinquent taxes. We’ve always paid the five percent commission. We paid it to the county out of our own tax revenue that we’re entitled to so actually we were never recovering our full tax amount because we’re having to pay the county the five percent commission off the top.”

In addition to modifying the process for collecting delinquent taxes, the board also amended a board policy limiting public comment to five minutes by a vote of 6-2 after a lengthy discussion amongst the board.

The policy, which had unofficially been in place for more than 20 years according some board members, was originally introduced as part of the board’s recent efforts to update board policy in some areas that may not have been changed for decades.

“We’re not changing past practice,” explained board member Mel Brodsky. “What we are doing is codifying what has been in existence for a couple of decades.”

However, some board members opposed the formalization of time limitations, believing that, because the board is elected to represent the taxpayers, those taxpayers should have the right to have their voices heard with no restrictions.

“We are elected by the taxpayers,” said board member Leslie Finegold. “We are public servants and we are not here to stifle public comment to a few minutes.”

Although the new policy limits speakers to only five minutes, School Board President Alan Tabachnick emphasized that, under the policy, speakers will also be permitted a two-minute follow-up after their initial five minutes and the time can be extended at the discretion of the board or the president. Finally, members of the public can also be request to be put on the board’s agenda by contacted either Tabachnick or Dave Sherman, community relations coordinator, which would then have no time limit.

“We, in no way, want to limit anyone’s participation in the process,” said Tabachnick. “This is just trying to tighten up some of our policies. We want everyone to be involved to make this as strong of a district as we can.”